God, I am so sleepy. Where did I leave you guys?
Oh, yeah, my FAILURE OF READING. Alas.
Anyway, despite my inability to update my blog on its normal schedule, I have actually been making pretty good progress on the planning for the Book 1 revision.
I finished my visual arcs, and I broke down what needs to stay in the story in the currently messy beginning bit.
I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about this before, but the first, oh, 8 or 9 chapters take place over about five or six months, and they feel a little disjointed. Moving the war to the very beginning of the book and fixing Lana’s internal arc will help that, but if I can consolidate the timeline down to, oh, three months or less, that will also help, especially if I can link the chapters together better.
So now I have a list of just the basic things that need to happen, which looks something like this:
- Prophecy needs to be around
- Midwinter component has to show up
- Bandicore attack
- Coming of age
- Midwinter (in some form) so Dan/Lana romance can get going
- Letters from Queen
- Meeting with Queen
- Dan and Lana need to make connection of themselves with prophecy
- Kira and Cerin need to meet
The bandicore attack has to happen before the letters from the Queen, and those have to happen before the meeting with the Queen, but everything else is up in the air. My plan is to play around with the order to see what makes the most sense from a pacing and arc standpoint, so that’s where I am at the moment.
I also got a bit sidelined by some research. Chapter 8 has existed in some form since the first draft (I think) though it has undergone a variety of changes over various drafts. (Especially since the original version was basically there to show off how badass my MCs are, and that’s not terribly useful.) In short, chapter 8 focuses on sparring to get ready for the war, and it’s awkward and boring and continuously bad, though it does have useful things happen in it (Kira and Cerin meet, from the bulletpoints above, and it provides major motivation for a side character that the MCs will cross paths with for all three books).
Anyway, while I was poking things this past week, I was kinda of like, well, how would they have trained for war? Is there a better exercise they could be doing which is more interesting, or can tie in to other things that have to happen or into character arcs?
And I realize this is something I really should have already researched, and maybe if I were starting the book from scratch today I would have, but this is what comes from having worked on a book for twenty years.
So I spent quite a lot of time looking at medieval armies and how they would have trained (including watching some random documentaries I found), and now I have notes about that, but I haven’t had a chance to go back in and figure out a better way to do the activity (or if I really even need it), but at least now I am informed.
And knowing is half the battle. Pun intended.
Anyway, once again, sorry for the bizarre posting schedule. Things are getting done!
Also, I submitted Hallowed Hill to a contest which was very scary and I almost backed out of doing so like three times, but I did it, and now, while I wait, I don’t think about it.
See you hopefully Tuesday, squiders!
